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Entry tags:
Le Guin, short stories
The Wind's Twelve Quarters (5/5), The Birthday of the World (3+/5)
This fall I read a lot of Le Guin, again. It's a surprise to no one who reads Le Guin that the content of her books changed dramatically between the 80's and the 00's. And it probably shouldn't have been surprising to me that her style changed dramatically, too — I'd certainly noticed already that writing Tehanu pastiche is a far different exercise than writing Wizard of Earthsea pastiche — but I spent a lot< of time this fall deconstructing and studying her early writing (I really like her later writing too, but I don't love it with the soul-shattering love I have for her earlier writing), and it's so interesting to me to see the distinct progression in style while the core of the writing remains the same.
She says it herself in the introduction to "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (which D insists on calling The Wind's $3) — "The progress of my style has been away from open romanticism, slowly and steadily... It has been a progress. I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of 'Semley's Necklace' have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex."
The romanticism, I think, displays itself partially in detail, not necessarily of physical objects or scenes (although she does that too) but also of the way people feel, the way they look at the world; and the way those two things interact. And she is not shy at all, in the first Earthsea trilogy, of sometimes just coming out, as the omniscient narrator, and talking thematically (e.g., when Ged meets the Shadow, light and darkness coming together). And there's correspondingly less interest in what would interest her more later — the sociological/ethnography aspect of it. Oh, the first Earthsea trilogy still is written with a distinct ethnography bent to it — the different cultures and characters-shaped-by-culture in Earthsea are so finely drawn and described — but it's not the focus; and social justice, of course, isn't even on the horizon.
Anyway, I read The Wind's Twelve Quarters straight through, which I've never done before (there are a couple of stories I've never actually read, and a couple I haven't revisited for years). It's a really great anthology, I think my favorite Le Guin anthology. While her writing is less romantic in the ending than the beginning, even the closing stories in the book are still very graceful and lovely.
I also read Five Ways to Forgiveness, which is a… very different book. It's -- how did she put it -- harder, stronger, more complex. I remember I'd tried to read some of these stories before, without success. I think I probably was about 10-20 years behind Le Guin in thinking about social justice, for starters, and also I was just too young in general. The stories in Forgiveness are adult stories. I didn't have the emotional context to understand "The Matter of Seggri" until now, I think, or to grasp the horror of it (it's really kind of a horror story at heart) and what it means about us.
But both books are true, I think, in the way that great writing is true, in that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human, how we live in this world. Different parts of the truth, but both truth nevertheless, and that is part of what makes Le Guin a great writer.
The other part, of course, is that her writing is more than half poetry. Her early work is a rounder (sorry, I don't know how else to put it), more beautiful poetry, while her later work is harder and more sharp-edged, but both are just really good. It's all wonderful to read aloud. (Which is a problem for me, in terms of pastiche, because when I write I don't really think about it orally!)
This fall I read a lot of Le Guin, again. It's a surprise to no one who reads Le Guin that the content of her books changed dramatically between the 80's and the 00's. And it probably shouldn't have been surprising to me that her style changed dramatically, too — I'd certainly noticed already that writing Tehanu pastiche is a far different exercise than writing Wizard of Earthsea pastiche — but I spent a lot< of time this fall deconstructing and studying her early writing (I really like her later writing too, but I don't love it with the soul-shattering love I have for her earlier writing), and it's so interesting to me to see the distinct progression in style while the core of the writing remains the same.
She says it herself in the introduction to "Semley's Necklace" in The Wind's Twelve Quarters (which D insists on calling The Wind's $3) — "The progress of my style has been away from open romanticism, slowly and steadily... It has been a progress. I am still a romantic, no doubt about that, and glad of it, but the candor and simplicity of 'Semley's Necklace' have gradually become something harder, stronger, and more complex."
The romanticism, I think, displays itself partially in detail, not necessarily of physical objects or scenes (although she does that too) but also of the way people feel, the way they look at the world; and the way those two things interact. And she is not shy at all, in the first Earthsea trilogy, of sometimes just coming out, as the omniscient narrator, and talking thematically (e.g., when Ged meets the Shadow, light and darkness coming together). And there's correspondingly less interest in what would interest her more later — the sociological/ethnography aspect of it. Oh, the first Earthsea trilogy still is written with a distinct ethnography bent to it — the different cultures and characters-shaped-by-culture in Earthsea are so finely drawn and described — but it's not the focus; and social justice, of course, isn't even on the horizon.
Anyway, I read The Wind's Twelve Quarters straight through, which I've never done before (there are a couple of stories I've never actually read, and a couple I haven't revisited for years). It's a really great anthology, I think my favorite Le Guin anthology. While her writing is less romantic in the ending than the beginning, even the closing stories in the book are still very graceful and lovely.
I also read Five Ways to Forgiveness, which is a… very different book. It's -- how did she put it -- harder, stronger, more complex. I remember I'd tried to read some of these stories before, without success. I think I probably was about 10-20 years behind Le Guin in thinking about social justice, for starters, and also I was just too young in general. The stories in Forgiveness are adult stories. I didn't have the emotional context to understand "The Matter of Seggri" until now, I think, or to grasp the horror of it (it's really kind of a horror story at heart) and what it means about us.
But both books are true, I think, in the way that great writing is true, in that it strikes to the heart of what it means to be human, how we live in this world. Different parts of the truth, but both truth nevertheless, and that is part of what makes Le Guin a great writer.
The other part, of course, is that her writing is more than half poetry. Her early work is a rounder (sorry, I don't know how else to put it), more beautiful poetry, while her later work is harder and more sharp-edged, but both are just really good. It's all wonderful to read aloud. (Which is a problem for me, in terms of pastiche, because when I write I don't really think about it orally!)